When people first get into beading they sometimes feel overwhelmed with all the new terminology and beading supplies they have to initially buy. And while the real fun of any sort of beading project is definitely in the creating something beady from scratch, one of aspects many people also enjoy is simply buying the beads. But even this process of buying beads is not easy because we’re constantly bombarded with a thousand different beads in a hundred different packages and counts at what seems like a million different prices! The trick is learning how to buy the same beads for less money. These are truly discounted beads!

I know a lot of people various local bead shops and online bead stores and they are quickly confused, bewildered and simply amazed at all the different varieties and prices of the many, many different types of beads available. Bead store owners deal with exactly the same issue: buying beads and maintaining an inventory of millions of little beads and supplies for an entire store can get to be quite a trying experience!

While the variety of beads and beading supplies available doesn’t look like it will get any smaller soon (thankfully… LOL!) there are some things you can do to eliminate some of the confusion of buying beads, especially when it comes to comparing prices.

When faced with the idea of buying the exact same or almost exact same bead from two different stores, you simply need to figure out what the cost per bead is and then buy the discounted bead. This is not a new idea and you might even do it now when you’re grocery shopping. But when you’re starting to buy lots of beads this can really come in handy and save you some money.

The cost per bead is calculated by simply taking the number of beads and dividing it by the price. One simple calculation will do it but you might want to use a calculator because the division is almost never perfect.

Let’s say you are faced with buying some beautiful limited edition Swarovski crystal beads and you’ve seen them being sold at two different places. One place advertises them as 50 for $5.95. The other place sells 75 of those Swarovski beads for $8.20. Which place is cheaper? All you have to do is do the math!

$5.95 / 50 beads = $.119 cents per bead.

$8.20 / 75 beads = $.109 cents per bead which is about a penny less per bead. These are the cheaper beads!

Now, I know… one cent per bead probably doesn’t sound like much of a discount, but let’s say you are making 30 different necklaces for an upcoming craft show and and each necklace has 100 Swarovski crystal beads in it then you just saved yourself $30.00. No, that isn’t a huge discount beads on beads for jewelry but as you buy more expensive beads and larger lots of beads the savings will really start to add up.

The best part about this is that if you’re using any sort of decent bead jewelry business software, then it should automatically figure out and save your cost-per-bead price so you can go back and later compare which beads are cheaper, even if they’re the same bead from different vendors.  Most bead jewelry software packages should have this feature, but the affordable Bead Manager Pro definitely has it.

I especially like to use the cost per bead method when comparing online bead store prices, especially when I’m comparing the exact same type, size and brand of bead. I do this for all my Swarovski crystal bead purchases and have found that I can save quite a lot depending upon what I’m looking for at the time. Obviously, you can do this little math trick with everyone from crystal beads to seed beads to wire (count length of wire) to find the best price for discount beads!